THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 21, 2015
105
BRIEFLY NOTED
THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD, by Elena Ferrante, translated
from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa). The final in-
stallment of Ferrante's engrossing and wildly popular Nea-
politan tetralogy concludes the story of the childhood com-
panions and competitors Elena and Lila. Elena, brought
back to Naples by the disintegration of her marriage and
the start of a new romance, contends with family disap-
proval, the challenges of bringing up daughters as she ad-
vances a literary career, and the pull of the charismatic Lila.
The novel examines friendship, motherhood, politics, class
conflict, and the project of writing, as Elena reflects, "I felt
strong, no longer a victim of my origins but capable of dom-
inating them, of giving them a shape, of taking revenge on
them for myself, for Lila, whomever."
THE INVADERS, by Karolina Waclawiak (Regan Arts).This novel
of suburban Connecticut takes on the challenge not only of
living up to forebears like Cheever and Updike but also of
making its main characters---Cheryl, a trophy wife, and her
entitled stepson, Teddy---likable. As the pair follow parallel
paths to self-destruction, the book draws out the disjunction
between a lush, decorous setting and the inner corruption of
its inhabitants. An over-reliance on well-worn tropes of the
genre---pill-popping housewives, lecherous neighbors---results
in a picture that doesn't feel entirely contemporary. Luckily,
Cheryl is both devious and complicated enough to hold our
attention. Her interloper perspective allows for bold reflec-
tions---knowing that she "could have ended up somewhere
where people had good reason to be unhappy."
THE BILLION DOLLAR SPY, by David E. Ho man (Doubleday).
On October 14, 1980, in Moscow, a C.I.A. agent put on a
wig and a fake beard to meet one of America's most impor-
tant sources, a quiet mid-level engineer named Adolf Geor-
gievich Tolkachev. Tolkachev had given the U.S. thousands
of pages of documents. He brought twenty-five rolls of film
to this meeting, along with a list of requests: albums by Led
Zeppelin, Genesis, and other Western bands for his teen-
age son. Ho man excels at conveying both the tradecraft
and the human vulnerabilities involved in spying. For sev-
eral days,Tolkachev, fearing arrest, put a suicide capsule under
his tongue every time he was called into his boss's o ce.
THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE, by James Rebanks (Flatiron). Rebanks's
family has farmed sheep in the hills of the Lake District,
in northwestern England, for some six centuries.The work,
detailed lovingly in this memoir, has changed little: from
predawn roundups on the fells to the fairs where tups and
ewes are still priced in guineas, it remains tied to and dic-
tated by location. Rebanks is concerned with the survival
of the landscape, of the life that it has fostered, and of its
inhabitants' view of the world. Away in a city, divorced from
the shifting days and seasons, Rebanks laments that he
sees only "big changes instead of the little ones I have al-
ways lived with."
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